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Looking back now, what were the warning signs that you ignored that indicated that your spouse had an affair?

And once the storm is over, you wonít remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive.But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you wonít be the same person who walked in. Thatís what this stormís all about.Ē

Posts: 911 | Registered: Nov 2011 | From: Somewhere in the South

stilltrying2025♀ 39145Member # 39145

Posted: 12:37 AM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

Unfortunately I had no warning signs. Everything was the same up until the day I left him. He never changed the way he acted towards me....he just wouldn't give his "friend" up.

The only thing I noticed over the 6 months is his libido dropped significantly. It was because of me; his OW lives 2 hours away and I would know if he went to see her at that time.

Focus on YOU! No expert here but there is awesome advice here and the best support ever; even if you need a 2x4 up against the head!

Chin and head up....you deserve it!

Me: 38
WH: 43
DD: Thanksgiving Day, 2012
Status: Separated

Posts: 184 | Registered: Apr 2013 | From: Minnesota

njgal480♀ 24938Member # 24938

Posted: 12:41 AM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

A very grouchy, detached,hyper- critical depressed acting husband.

He wasn't going out all the time, he wasn't working out, dressing better etc.

He was the grouch on the couch.

Not interested in doing anything with me or our children. He was drinking heavily.

xWH#1:
-becoming more detached, less talkative
-being out more
-taking more care of his appearance
-making elaborate excuses for his absences for family get togethers

Current WH:
-talking more and more on the phone
-acting nicer and buying me things more
-getting upset that I was suspicious and didn't trust him
-making elaborate lies and excuses for any red flags that I had
-promising he would NEVER do that to me
-being physically there, but not emotionally there with me and the kids
-sometimes being very moody for no reason (now I know because he was having an argument with OW)
- saying that WE did something or went someplace where I know we didn't.
- not calling me when away and getting angry at me if I was upset about this

I'm sure I could think of more

Posts: 2081 | Registered: Jan 2010

LearningToFly♀ 39073Member # 39073

Posted: 1:10 AM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

I can't remember if he always erased computer history and phone messages but he has done it for a long time. He says he likes to keep things cleaned up. Its possible but I know now that he erased email messages he sent to OW. (he forgot to erase messages she sent back with his original messages connected to them though.)

I remember thinking...if I didn't know him better, I would think he is having an affair. This was mainly because he was getting up so early to go to McDonalds and going to McDonalds after work. He rarely talked about anything besides the weather. At home he was on the computer constantly. I hadn't thought about an Long distance emotional affair though.

We have a lot going on with our kids and he doesn't like conflict. Yet, if I took the initiative to come up with a way to handle something, he would knock it down. Yet, he did not bring anything else to the table. We fought a lot about that. I see now that after our fights he would email OW for comfort and validation.

He was interested in going to his High School Reunion in the midst of all the family stuff and we had to cut short our visit to my family (when we went to a pretrial for the drunk driver who killed my brother and his son) so that he could go. He had never been interested before. He graduated in 1972 and was not really involved in anything in High School.

I felt more and more that he wanted me out. He worked harder to connect to our adult children yet he pulled away and criticized my relationship with them. i felt like the outcast of the family. We really needed to set limits on drugs, drinking and sex in our home yet he would not back me up.

I asked him is there was someone else because he was so emotionally cold to me and was saying things like "I never really loved you the way a guy should when he marries her." "I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a marriage like this." "We need to go our separate ways so we can be the people we were born to be."

My husband has always been self-centered, emotionally distant, and a people pleaser (except with me...I get to be the sacrifice so he can say yes to everyone else). However, he would appoligize and promise to "grow." That stopped completely. He became mean, critical, and ice cold. That was the difference.

Me - BS (53) Him-WS(58)
Her OW(55) HighSchoolGirlfriend
Together 30 years Married 28 Kids 24,21,18
D day Feb 26 2013 after 20 months
D day March 4 they met again "to say goodbye"
D day April 2 found out about secret email

Posts: 188 | Registered: Apr 2013

betrayed2years♂ 38601Member # 38601

Posted: 3:12 AM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

oh yes, the "i love you, but I'm not in love with you any more" ,
the maybe we need to separate.
for awhile
the no there is no one else.
the texting to a friend...
the have to go in to work early
the had to work late.
the i need some space.
i knew there was something going on,but the lies, the bullshit, the whole damn thing was a scam toward me, just tell the truth, and leave !!!

Posts: 22 | Registered: Mar 2013 | From: p.a.

Tiredofthepain♀ 37932Member # 37932

Posted: 6:52 AM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

With a SA you look back can clearly see just how much their acting out affected your whole marriage
The more he got into porn, the less sex he wanted. Then came the whores. Less and less sex for over a year or more, even before the whores. He was wasting all of his sexual energy on meaningless fantasies.
He would have times when he seemed like my old H and I would think things were getting better but it never lasted.
He was very depressed, very stressed and overly involved with his job at the time.
He works from home a lot and was spending most of his time on his laptop.
He had gotten to where he would snap at me and say really hurtful thngs, which he had never done before.
He was distant, I would try and discuss how there was something seriously wrong with our M over and over and he would say he was stressed, didn't see it, etc, etc.
He would blame the lack of sex on being stressed from work or us never having time alone. We have one grown son at home and one teenager, it's not like we have small kids running around and I would say, well at night you lock the door and have couple time!
I knew he was probably cheating, but had no proof at the time. Turns out the majority of the lack of sex came from his extreme addiction to porn that he was lying and hiding from me.
He had no interest in me or the kids lives anymore, he would often say he was so stressed he had nothing left to give anyone.
Short version is, he acted like a different person from the one I had lived with for 20 years, but he didn't do any of the stereotypical things like caring more about his appearance etc, because he cheated with whores, who cares what you look like to them?

I was really slow to realize that he was having an A. Anytime I got suspicious and asked him, he would deny it and try to make me think I was crazy. Now looking back at all these signs, I realize that I was burying my head in the sand. How could I have been so stupid for so many months? Why did I constantly reject the notion that he was cheating? At times I felt like I was losing my mind, I stayed confused and he made me feel so guilty. Here are some of the things that went on before I finally got my head together and discovered his A:

He stopped having sex with me.

He ignored me. Acted like he could barely tolerate my company.

He didn't want to touch me. He wouldn't hold my hand anymore and I wasn't allowed to sleep near him in our bed.

He told me that his feelings for me had changed.

He was angry at me and blamed me for everything. At times he acted like he hated me.

He started drinking Vodka heavily. He drank every single night to the point he passed out. We argued about it constantly.

He started grooming his privates and having me shave his back. I asked him why did he suddenly need his back shaved after all these years since I was the only one to ever see it. He never gave me a straight answer. Just that he didn't like having a hairy back.

He bought new clothes and dressed snazzier for work. He lost weight.

He kept making me leave our home and go visit our family.
He made me feel guilty if I refused and told me I was a bad mother and grandmother for not wanting to spend time with them. I got tired of going out of state for a week or two every month.

His cell phone was glued to him. He took it to bed with him and to the bathroom. It never left his side. He hid it when he showered.

He would text and swear he wasn't. Claimed he was reading articles on his cell phone. He tried to make me think I wasn't seeing what I was seeing.

His female coworker was calling him 24/7. He claimed it was work related. I said if she is that stupid and cannot do her job without constantly needing your help even at 6 am on Sunday mornings and midnight on Saturday nights then she needs to be fired. I said no way does someone work that many hours. He swore she did and it was all innocent.

He started going to another room or outside to take phone calls.

He would go outside or the bathroom at restaurants to take phone calls.

He would leave his seat at the movie theatre and go out into the lobby to take phone calls instead of waiting until the movie was over. This went on at EVERY movie we went to.

I saw him text her in front of me but couldn't read the words only her name and then he immediately deleted it. I asked why he deleted the message and he said it was work related and that he deletes all his work related text.

Large amounts of money was missing every month that he refused to account for.

He kept $800 to $1000 cash in his wallet all the time where in the past, he NEVER kept any money. He always used his ATM card for purchases. He never spent that money while with me. He always used his ATM card and if I questioned him, he would scream at me and it would blow up into an argument. He never answered my questions.

Even though he had a company credit card, he used our ATM card for business "expenses" and then got reimbursed but always cashed the checks and never returned the money to our joint account. Once when I questioned him if he remembered to get the check for a business expensive he started screaming and yelling at me in public for asking him about it.

He started "working" late most days.

He was never hungry when he got home at night and never wanted to eat supper. He told me not to cook supper anymore as he wouldn't eat it.

He started "working" a lot of weekends.

He stopped allowing me to come to his job to pick him up for lunch. Instead he insisted on meeting somewhere.

He said he had to go on a business trip for Memorial Day weekend starting that Friday morning (four days off) with his boss to entertain their customers at an exclusive beach resort spa at a major tourist beach city in Florida. He wanted me to go out of state again to visit family for the holiday. I insisted on going with him instead and he became angry and started screaming at me. He said wives weren't allowed. I told him that I did not believe that his boss would be paying for a trip for ALL of their customers to a beach resort on a holiday weekend. It was way too expensive and it didn't sound right. No one would want to be away from family on a major holiday and go on a business trip and the cost would be astronomical for his company. He told me I was trying to ruin his job and get him in trouble. I refused to back down and told him I didn't believe him and wanted him to call or email his boss in front of me to confirm the trip and he refused. He canceled the trip and told me that I had interfered with his job.

He started talking about how unhappy he was and how much stress he was under at work and he thought he would be better off not being married anymore. That he needed to be alone so that his stress level wouldn't be as high due to his job. So I said, you will pick your job over your wife to relieve stress? He said yes.

He started telling me how he knew I could support myself if we divorced and that he would help me financially. That he hoped I realized that after 32 years of M that he would not abandon me after a D but would give me money to help me get on my feet.

After reading all of this again, I am starting to believe that I must be crazy not to have realized he was having an A earlier.

Thinking back...
There was one clue that should have woken me up right away, but it didn't. One night the sex was different and degrading. He was rough with me and saying things like take that you little slut. He also put his hands around my neck like he was choking me and holding me down, he didn't hurt me physically and he never would. I was clueless at the time and thought that maybe he was acting out some porn or something. After finding out about his cheating with the bar slut, I thought about this incident and realized that it happend the month that he was seeing her.

Me: 39 BGF
Him: 45 WBF
DD#1 02/06/13 Found 6 months of texts between him and my friend
DD#2 03/14/13 Found texting between him and a 24 year old he met at his gig
DD#3 03/17/13 confessed to BJ from bar SLUT
DD#4 03/18/13 Had sex 2X with bar SLUT

Posts: 27 | Registered: Apr 2013 | From: mysticmoons

Cookie7088♀ 30038Member # 30038

Posted: 10:26 AM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

He was wearing new shirts. Using the excuse he bought them, "A while back..."

This man never bought his own clothes, and not at the price those ($80)shirts would have cost.

And...he came home with a new set of PING Anser golf clubs saying he got a good deal on them. Yep she bought them for him -- a $1,400 gift.

Posts: 703 | Registered: Nov 2010 | From: U.S.

Mack9512♀ 38619Member # 38619

Posted: 10:35 AM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

Let's see:

1. He stopped talking to me
2. He became short tempered with our DD
3. His phone gave the appearance of being surgically attached to his hip
4. He was constantly on the computer doing "music" stuff
The most telling of all?
5. He decided that he wanted to grow his hair (what little he has of it) so that it looked like it did in college. The MOW was an old college friend.

"If you're brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello." - Paulo Coehlo

Posts: 430 | Registered: Mar 2013 | From: East Coast

HeartInADustpan♀ 38341Member # 38341

Posted: 10:39 AM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

1. Sex was a chore. He wouldn't say it but you could hear the huff, puff and eye roll if I had to have it. He never initiated.

2. Phone was glued to his hand everywhere. He even has a special case so he can take it in the shower...and he did.

3. Anything asked by myself or DS was a huge inconvenience and infringement on "his" time.

4. He would bait me into arguments about DS.

5. He would bait me into talking about how bad our M was literally out of the blue. Such as "I just don't think you're happy with me, maybe you should leave and D me." I guess to make it "not his fault."

6. He came home from "work" one night and immediately showered. He never in our entire relationship did that. I even point blank asked if he was cheating on me that night and he denied it to my face.

I'm sure there are more, but here's the sample list.

Just call me Heart. :)
Reconciling
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything" ~Mark Twain

Posts: 379 | Registered: Feb 2013 | From: St. Louis

TrustGone♀ 36654Member # 36654

Posted: 4:08 PM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

I guess when he shaved all the hair off his privates, that should have been a big clue, but silly me, believed him when he said the hair made his d$%& hot.

WW Showed up at OP house for "tea party" with OP daughter but never told me where she was all day.

WS was supposed to go out with the girls and just happens to stop by the bar and takes OP with her to the club.

[This message edited by didiknow at 5:21 PM, May 31st (Friday)]

Me-BH (38)
Her-WW (27)
M Aug 29, 2010
D-day May 25, 2013
A #1 June 2012
A #2 Late 2012-May 2013
No matter what "new" information you find out, it's all just part of the same iceberg, hidden under the surface.

Posts: 50 | Registered: May 2013 | From: wa

HeartInADustpan♀ 38341Member # 38341

Posted: 5:17 PM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

Not returning texts or phone calls.

Oh I forgot this one! He was too busy texting/talking to all his AP's. Take him a matter of seconds for them, hours sometimes for me. If I mentioned slow response time, I was being "controlling"

Just call me Heart. :)
Reconciling
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything" ~Mark Twain

Posts: 379 | Registered: Feb 2013 | From: St. Louis

Zayda1♀ 35387Member # 35387

Posted: 5:45 PM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

Spent a lot of time on his phone/tablet.

Started sleeping in our spare bed so his snoring didn't wake me up.

Excessive porn (even after we had just has sex).

Mood swings.

Seemed off in his own world, not really present when at home with the kids.

Offered to take me shopping (out of guilt).

*sign*. I could go on and on and on. I wish I had paid more attention back then, maybe it wouldn't have been such a shock.

Married 10 years, together for 12 years
2 children (8 years & 5 years)
Discovery of PA 04/15/12 (It only lasted a "couple of weeks" but it still shattered my world.)

Posts: 481 | Registered: Apr 2012

Conflicted1♀ 39019Member # 39019

Posted: 6:20 PM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

You know it took time for me to connect because dday was much delayed due to TT...but looking back it was when he told me he was having doubts at about the 5 year mark of our marriage because he felt a "need" to have a child with me and couldn't. He knew when he met me that I was no longer able to have children and when he asked me to marry him I talked to him about concerns that would become an issue as we were both in early 30s and he had a single child with his first wife. I was devastated at the time and suggested we look into surrogacy options to see if it was something we could even come close to affording. It didnt even cross my mind that it was because of a A with a younger woman. I was so wrapped up in the pain of feeling inferior as a woman and wife in the moment.

Honesty is a very expensive gift. Don't expect it from cheap people.

Posts: 101 | Registered: Apr 2013 | From: Me=BW 45

Reality♀ 39077Member # 39077

Posted: 6:36 PM, May 31st (Friday), 2013

Oh I forgot this one! He was too busy texting/talking to all his AP's. Take him a matter of seconds for them, hours sometimes for me. If I mentioned slow response time, I was being "controlling"

This, this, this.

The feeling of checking phone records, of seeing the sheer volume of texts to them, versus to me was devastating. And texting them freaking late into the night! The time I checked, with him sitting next to me, he practically ripped the keyboard from my hands and said that knowing "would only hurt me."

Also, he started making a big production of coming and giving me a kiss on some weird timed schedule to show he was being "attentive."